The logical positivist critique of religion is not dead. Arguably not. At best, the positivist criterion of meaning is a recommendation about what to count as meaningful. Ayer popularized this criterion of meaning in his 1936 book, Language, Truth, and Logic. It was he who took credit, with designers John Tjaarda and E. T. “Bob” Gregorie, for the startling, aerodynamic 1936 Lincoln Zephyr. Instead, he took inspiration for Shangri-La from another utopian dream, a place known for centuries as Shambhala. On this view, statements are true or false depending upon whether reality matches the picture expressed by the statements. On this view, the belief in question must not be undermined (or defeated) by other, evident beliefs held by the person. Some argue that it is too stringent; we have many evident beliefs that we would be at a loss to successfully justify. There have been at least two interesting, recent developments in the philosophy of religion in the framework of evidentialism. Two movements in philosophy of religion develop positions that are not in line with the traditional evidential tradition: reformed epistemology and volitional epistemology. Rowling has come out publicly against conservative politics in Britain and the United States, including the Brexit and Trump movements.

In the same period, Protestantism, including the Church of Ireland, has also decreased in percentage but has experienced a modest rise in absolute numbers. In the Philosophical Investigations (published posthumously in 1953) and in many other works (including the publication of notes taken by his students on his lectures), Wittgenstein opposed what he called the picture theory of meaning. In philosophical reflection about God the tendency has been to give priority to what may be called bare theism (assessing the plausibility of there being the God of theism) rather than a more specific concept of God. Being used to having an invocation delivered during gatherings, I am dismayed at most of the office meetings and public activities I attend in New Zealand since prayers are not said as a matter of practice. Short communion prayers can serve as a way to express this desire and invite God’s presence to fill their hearts and souls. The Christian account, accessed through scripture, is a story of love: of God’s love for us and of what God has prepared for those who love him… It is a story of the salvific value of suffering: our sufferings are caught up with Christ’s, and are included in the sufferings adequate for the world’s redemption, sufferings Christ has willed to make his own.

Farmers, even those who sell speciality coffee, still struggle to earn the money they need to make a decent living. Because there is evidence that God does not make Godself available to earnest seekers of such a relationship, this is evidence that such a God does not exist. While this prompting may play an evidential role in terms of the experience or ostensible perception of God, it can also warrant Christian belief in the absence of evidence or argument (see K. Clark & VanArragon 2011; M. Bergmann 2017; and Plantinga & Bergmann 2016). In the language Plantinga introduced, belief in God may be as properly basic as our ordinary beliefs about other persons and the world. Third, limiting human experience to what is narrowly understood to be empirical seemed to many philosophers to be arbitrary or capricious. By his lights, theism, and also atheism and agnosticism, were nonsense, because they were about the reality (or unreality or unknowability) of that which made no difference to our empirical experience. Perhaps the import of the Menssen-Sullivan proposal is that philosophers of religion need to enhance their critical assessment of general positions along with taking seriously more specific accounts about the data on hand (e.g., when it comes to theism, assessing the problem of evil in terms of possible theological positions on redemption as presented in ostensible revelations).

Evidentialism has been defended by representatives of all the different viewpoints in philosophy of religion: theism, atheism, advocates of non-theistic models of God, agnostics. According to the prestigious Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, religious epistemology is “a branch of philosophy that investigates the epistemic status of propositional attitudes about religious claims” (Audi 2015: 925). Virtually all the extant and current methodologies in epistemology have been employed in assessing religious claims. While this non-realist approach to religion has its defenders today, especially in work by Howard Wettstein, many philosophers have contended that traditional and contemporary religious life rests on making claims about what is truly the case in a realist context. For example, Phillips contended that the practice of prayer is best not viewed as humans seeking to influence an all powerful, invisible person, but to achieve solidarity with other persons in light of the fragility of life. If a form of life has only three, then it would be a borderline example.